


like a design

by jinlian



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 18:46:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9285224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinlian/pseuds/jinlian
Summary: At twenty-five years old, Yuuri Katsuki makes his first Olympic team. This comes with its own set of responsibilities and questions, and a three-time Olympian husband only might be prepared to handle them. Or, In Regards to Love: Tramp Stamp Tattoos. You read that right.





	

Yuuri Katsuki is many things: a figure skater, a dancer, an athlete, a Grand Prix Final gold medalist, a trained pole-dancer, five-time Japanese national champion, a married man, a first-time Olympian, an anxious mess. He’s all of these things and more, the extent of which his husband would be happy to try to explain in great detail—Victor loves any excuse to talk about Yuuri Katsuki—but if there had to be only one thing used to describe him, however, Victor would have to call him _mysterious._

 

This might be an odd thing to call one’s husband whose ears turn red at the slightest moment’s embarrassment and who is currently shirtless in front of their bedroom mirror, twisting in angles that only a ballet-trained figure skater can as he inspects himself. But he _is_ a mystery. Even after a year of living together and months of marriage, Victor struggles to understand precisely the way his mind works. This isn’t a bad thing, exactly; Yuuri is a question wrapped up in a revelation, a breath held before an answer. Of course Victor does his best to know him, and for the most part, he has learned. When Yuuri is happy, when he’s anxious, when he’s desirous—Victor has placed hours of study into every line of his body and each blink of his eyes. But sometimes Victor just can’t fathom _what_ is going on in Yuuri’s mind, and the only thing he can do is wait to see where it leads him.

 

That’s all part of the joy of loving Yuuri Katsuki, after all.

 

It has been exactly one week and a day since Yuuri claimed his second consecutive title at Japanese Nationals (his _second_ second consecutive title, Victor has been sure to emphasize, even though Yuuri waves him off each time he does with a red face and a pleased smile). There aren’t any other male skaters in the Japanese senior division who even come close to challenging the current world record-holder in both the short and free programs. But Yuuri treats this win the same as he treats every one of them, with a strange sort of bewilderment that he has managed yet _another_ accomplishment to add to his ever-growing list. Because of this, and despite his win at last season’s Worlds and this year’s Grand Prix Final, it has only been one week and a day since Yuuri began to take it as certain that he _will_ be on the team representing Japan at the Olympics in Pyeongchang. Perhaps this has something to do with his strangely distracted behavior throughout the past week. Perhaps _that_ has something to do with his current inexplicable fixation on his naked torso in the mirror.

 

Or perhaps none of that has anything to do with anything, and this is just another one of Yuuri’s unrelated mysteries. Victor doesn’t know. But he does know that a self-inspection in this manner isn’t usual Yuuri behavior.

 

Victor simply watches for now, sprawled on their bed with one arm tucked on the pillow behind his head and the other scratching absentmindedly behind Makkachin’s ears. Yuuri does not even seem to notice Victor, despite the fact that Victor’s reflection in clearly visible in the mirror over Yuuri’s shoulder with his eyes trained in quiet curiosity on his husband’s antics. Yuuri is half-twisted, apparently trying to see something on his back that simply doesn’t exist, and then upright again, frowning as he runs a hand across his ribcage. He repeats this: once, twice, again. Puffs his cheeks with air, blows it out. Sweeps his hair away from his face, pulls, leaves it a finger-combed mess.

 

“…Yuuri.”

 

Anxiety, Victor has learned in his few months of marriage, is not something that can be cured. It’s not something that he can anticipate. But he can learn when to recognize it, at least in Yuuri: it’s in the twitches he sometimes gets in his cheek from clenching his jaw too hard or incessant drumming of his fingers against his thigh, in his unusually rapid blinking or biting on his lip so hard it bleeds. Something repetitive, as though Yuuri’s desperately trying to hold something in that threatens to explode from him in the thunderclap of a storm. This is what Victor sees now, or he thinks he does; so his voice, when he says Yuuri’s name, is as steady as it is light.

 

Yuuri turns, snapped out of his study. Victor raises his eyebrows. Yuuri’s own face is scrunched and drawn, a scowl evident on his lips.

 

Is it his weight? Victor wonders. Certainly Yuuri has had plenty of excuses to eat in celebration lately. It would be a concern for Yuuri’s jumps, but beyond that he hadn’t ever thought of it as a source of worry for either of them. Besides, he thinks, eyes tracing the shadows on Yuuri’s abdomen and the sharp V of his hips leading to the waist of his too-loose sweats, the strength training they’ve been doing in the early mornings seems to be paying off well enough.

 

“You’re beautiful from every angle, _milyy moy,”_ Victor informs his husband, a smile playing at his lips. He lifts his hand from Makkachin’s head and extends it to Yuuri instead.

 

Yuuri groans, and with that, releases the tense focus carried in his face and shoulders. Victor so rarely uses nicknames and endearments for Yuuri that when he does, he’s almost invariably trying to express something specific or demand Yuuri’s attention. The attempt works, and Yuuri crawls back onto the bed, settling onto his knees as he takes Victor’s offered hand.

 

“I’m trying to figure out where to put it,” Yuuri mutters.

 

He squeezes and lets go, opting to pat Makkachin a few times instead. Victor drops his hand.

 

Well. That answered precisely nothing.

 

“Put what?”

 

Yuuri doesn’t respond immediately, and Victor doesn’t push him to do so. He waits, watching Yuuri’s red-eared focus on Makkachin, who is soundly asleep on Victor’s stomach. Finally—just as Victor is about to repeat his question in slightly firmer tones—Yuuri reaches across his chest and traces a line up the arm Victor has tucked behind his head, from the curve of his elbow to his bicep where the sleeve of his T-shirt has tugged its way up Victor’s arm. Victor takes this as a sign that Yuuri is about to say something, so still he waits; but Yuuri _still_ says nothing.

 

Victor likes to think of himself as a very patient man, but sometimes he just really doesn’t get _what_ is going through Yuuri’s head. He takes a breath, drawing his insistence between his teeth, but when Yuuri begins tracing tiny circles on his skin Victor suddenly understands that Yuuri already _has_ answered the question.

 

The _rings._

 

If tattoos weren’t permanent, Victor honestly might have forgotten that he’d ever gotten one at all. It’s small as far as tattoos go, despite the simple laurel pattern added for embellishment, and even the colors on the rings are hardly noticeable.

 

“I was thinking I should get one,” Yuuri says in explanation.

 

Olympic rings, _Olympic_ rings, Victor reminds himself about the tattoo. So he hadn’t been wrong about Yuuri’s strange behavior having something to do with his win at Nationals, even if the connection takes a number of turns along the way to get there. For a three-time Olympian and medalist like Victor, it’s just a tattoo; but for _Yuuri,_ who still somehow credits his husband with his own world records, it must seem just a little rather more significant. And he’s probably more familiar with Victor’s body than Victor is at this point. With the upcoming Games it must have felt like Victor’s own tattoo was taunting him.

 

Victor smiles and reaches his free back up to tuck Yuuri’s hair behind his ear. He trails his fingertips down Yuuri’s jaw, ghosting patterns on his cheek and chin.

 

“Do you admire your coach so much to be like him? Or are you finally listening to his advice and thinking of a permanent reminder that will ensure no one, not even you, can forget what you’ve achieved?”

 

He rests his palm flat against Yuuri’s cheek. Yuuri snorts a laugh but leans into it, and Victor strains to lift his head from the pillow to press his forehead against Yuuri’s. Makkachin, disturbed by the movement, grunts and steps on Victor in his hurry to jump off the bed.

 

“Ouch,” Victor says weakly, a few inches from Yuuri’s lips.

 

Yuuri bites his smile and leans away, ignoring Victor’s gasp of indignation. He takes Victor’s hand from his cheek and spreads it palm-up in his own.

 

“Well, I wonder.” Yuuri bounces Victor’s hand lightly against his before meeting Victor’s eyes with a determined set to his jaw. “Victor. Tell me? How you decided to get yours, and how you decided _where_ to get it.”

 

Now that a source for Yuuri’s fixation with his upper half has been identified, Victor no longer worries about the lines of thoughts and explanations running through his husband’s head. Either it will all make itself clear enough that Victor will understand, or it’ll simply resolve itself as Yuuri works through the things that he needs. Either result is a good one as far as Victor is concerned, so he relaxes back into his pillow and hums, trying to remember. It’s not an easy thing to remember. How _had_ he even decided? He doesn’t think he’d ever really wanted a tattoo at any point in his childhood, and it certainly wasn’t a common practice among the Russian figure skaters at his rink. 

 

The idea must have settled somewhere in his mind when he was fifteen, then.

 

The summer Olympics had been that year. He had just changed coaches, his first season with Yakov Feltsman, and they had decided to postpone his entry into the senior division until they had a better sense of their relationship as coach and athlete. Victor was also recovering from injury: a sprained ligament in his knee, punishment for the quadruple flip he’d been insistent that he could land (and he _could_ land it — but, as his knee reminded him, land it poorly). He’d been ordered to take a week off the ice and to “try harder to understand what it is you give to the sport in the meantime, Victor. Your body belongs to figure skating now, not to your whimsy.”

 

So he’d had little else to do but to ice his knee and watch television, which he didn’t often do. Victor didn’t follow any sports besides figure skating, but swimming and diving were easy enough to understand—and, he’d thought at the time, he truly admired the look of a nice Speedo-clad male body. Swimmers particularly were built differently than figure skaters. Their shoulders were much broader, and their backs muscled beautifully. Did water roll off most male athletes like that? 

 

It must be nice, Victor had thought while watching relay swimmers peel themselves halfway out of their too-tight fastskins right there on the deck and slap each other on the back in celebratory group hug-piles. It must be nice to be able embrace one’s teammates. Surely these were sturdy, heartfelt hugs. He might like one.

 

In any case, with a lot of wet skin left bare for his inspection Victor had begun to notice that swimmers and divers alike—and even some of the gymnasts, when he watched them, too—had many a similar tattoo. It was mostly obvious on the Americans, but they weren’t the only Olympians who had the five rings tattooed bright and obvious somewhere on their bodies. They wore it like a badge of pride: I made it this far, it had seemed to say, and it’s a sign that I’m sharing in something so much bigger than just myself. It had been a sort of pride that fifteen-year-old Victor Nikiforov had admired.

 

“I had,” he says in a slow response to Yuuri’s question, “inspiration.”

 

Yuuri pushes his glasses back up from where they’ve slipped down his nose.

 

Victor pulls his hand from Yuuri’s and mimics the motion, pushing at the bridge of Yuuri’s glasses and keeping his finger there, preventing them from slipping any further. He’s grinning now, and he can see the dawning of exasperation that Yuuri fully expects whatever joke it is that Victor holds now on his tongue. Victor doesn’t plan to disappoint him; when he speaks draws out each consonant with an amusement he offers for Yuuri to share.

 

“I spent a _lot_ of time studying photoshoots of Ryan Lochte.”

 

He waits three seconds. During those three seconds, the blank look on Yuuri’s face is clear enough indication that he doesn’t recognize the name, but the sudden brilliance of color in his cheeks at the end of them confirms that he’s understood the implication.

 

_“Victor—“_ And then he’s pushing Victor’s hand away all while he rolls over to straddle Victor’s hips. “That can’t _really_ be your answer—“

 

“Are you jealous?” Victor cocks his head, does not bother trying to blow his hair out of his eyes as he lifts his own hips up to grind against Yuuri. “You’re much more beautiful than he is, _my_ _Yuuri,_ more pleasing to the eye, though I’m afraid I’m already married, for we can’t all be so lucky to marry the man of our posters—“

 

“Oh, be quiet,” Yuuri says, and he shuts Victor up with a kiss.

 

This succeeds in keeping Victor quiet for a little while, happy as he is to become nothing but lips and teeth and tongue with Yuuri. But Yuuri had asked him a question, and Victor, in all his heady happiness, has been made very determined to answer it.

 

“Yuuri,” he breathes against his husband’s lips.

 

“Mm,” Yuuri responds, pressing hard, hard down on Victor’s groin as he drops his head to bite and lick Victor’s neck.

 

Victor’s eyes flutter half-closed as he tilts his head back to extend his neck and ask for more. “I have an idea.”

 

Yuuri stops, frozen bent over Victor and his mouth open and wet against his skin. Victor can practically hear his thoughts in the sudden petrification: _This is either going to be_ very _good or_ very _bad._

 

“What’s your idea, Victor?”

 

Victor sits upright, almost slamming into Yuuri’s head as he does so, and clasps Yuuri’s cheeks between his hands to make sure they’re looking at each other when he speaks. 

 

“Let’s get matching tattoos!”

 

Yuuri splutters. _“Victor!_ What are you even—“

 

“Since you’re jealous—” 

 

“I am _not_ jealous—”

 

“I’ll have to do something to make up for it. I even know where we can get it. I’ll get a new one, and we’ll have—oh, what’s the English word—tramp stamps—”

 

This time Victor does not have to wait for Yuuri’s reaction. The moment Victor says _tramp stamp_ with all the enthusiasm of an earnest eight-year-old, Yuuri releases any tension still bunched in his muscles in one immediate, ebullient wave of laughter. He sags against Victor’s chest; Victor, still holding Yuuri’s face up in his hands, has front row seats to seeing Yuuri completely lose the fight to maintain any sense of control on his mirth as he gasps for air.

 

Victor’s own grin only grows wider.

 

“You’re not serious,” Yuuri chokes out when he finally manages to speak through his laughter. “I can’t believe you just said _tramp stamp.”_

 

_“Matching_ tramp stamps,” Victor corrects Yuuri, and he's rewarded with seeing Yuuri snort so hard with laughter his glasses once again slip down his face.

 

“Oh, right,” Yuuri guffaws, “excuse me, of course, _matching_ tramp stamps—Victor, do you even know what a tramp stamp—“ 

“I know,” Victor says solemnly. “On the lower back, just above the waistline. Easy enough to hide, unless you take off your shirt or your pants drop just a little too low, and equally easy to show off…” He drops his voice to a murmur, just barely above a whisper in the lowest register he can manage. “But mostly where it’d be just for you and me.”

 

It isn’t Yuuri who shivers at that, but Victor himself. He’d been joking, mostly. At least about the tattoos. But as soon as he makes his pitch to Yuuri, he realizes that he wouldn’t even mind. If Yuuri wanted to do it, Victor would drop everything and get that tattoo above his ass in an instant.

 

The realization is frighteningly exciting, really.

 

Yuuri, for his part, is still laughing. His hair is still swept back from his earlier inspections in the mirror, but long as it is its falling easily back now into his eyes. Victor admires that black of his hair against the flush of Yuuri’s skin, left either from Victor’s teasing or their kissing from moments ago, and the way Yuuri’s smiles strain against the limits of his cheeks. His laughter is throaty, clouds the air around them and wraps Victor up from head to toe.

 

“What would yours even say?” Yuuri wants to know. “Or be? If mine’s going to be the Olympic rings, but you already have one.”

 

“Hmm.” That’s a good point. Victor gives this some serious consideration, tapping his fingers against Yuuri’s cheeks while he does this. “One specific to this year’s Olympics in Pyeongchang. Like the logo, maybe. Or the year in Roman numerals.”

 

Yuuri takes off his glasses and wipes his eyes, his shoulders still shaking a little with his laughter. “But you’re not skating, Victor. You retired permanently this summer. And you never got anything specific to the Olympics in Torino or Vancouver or Marseilles.”

 

Well, and Yuuri would know that better than Victor himself would at this point, wouldn’t he? It’s reassuring to know he hadn’t gotten anything on his back he should know about.

 

“No,” Victor agrees, “but this is my glorious Olympic debut as coach to the top figure skater in the world. _And_ as your husband. Even after you so cruelly kept me from my sixth straight World Champion title and left me to take silver and retire in shame, that alone is momentous enough—”

 

“ _Vityenka,”_ Yuuri protests, and his voice is firm and warm.

 

Victor had never been happier to stand below anyone else on the podium as he had been that March. He’d made certain that everyone knew it, too: even with Yakov’s grumbled instructions to _behave himself,_ Victor had not been able to hold back the swell of pride in his chest as Yuuri had taken one step higher and bent his head to accept the ribbon around his neck. The medal had been _right there,_ and so had been Victor, whose hazy pride had reached out to that medal and lifted it to his lips. First the medal, and then Yuuri himself—which, surely, should have surprised no one. It hadn’t been the first time they’d kissed in front of the cameras on an ice rink. And if he’d made sure that his ring was as visible in every picture as he could make it, no one could think that was coincidence either. Every question regarding how it felt to return only to lose his title, how to be defeated by his own student, if he’d been too ambitious in trying both to coach and skate—Victor had simply waved it all off, uncaring, with nothing to tell the cameras but that there could be no no greater bliss as a coach than to be defeated by one’s own fiancé.

 

“Anyway,” Victor murmurs and lets his hands fall away from Yuuri’s cheeks. “Where are _you_ thinking that you’d like to get it?”

 

“That’s why I wanted to ask for your opinion,” Yuuri responds. Victor falls back against the pillows, but Yuuri only shifts with him to stay exactly where he’s been. “I don’t think I want it on my arm in the same place as you. It looks good on _you,_ but it’s just—not me.”

 

Victor begins to draw lines down Yuuri’s chest with his fingertips. 

 

“…So where do you think I should get it?”

 

There’s some irony in his own lack of hurry to answer, in light of Victor’s near-impatience with Yuuri earlier. He considers this distantly before returning seriously, and this time _truly_ seriously, to his search for all the answers Yuuri needs.

 

In the end, it’s all up to Yuuri alone. _Your body belongs to the rink,_ Victor will never tell him. _Everything you do to it, everything that becomes it. You give everything to the ice, body and soul. Pristine. For your performance, for the audience. Your body isn't yours alone._

 

Victor will never tell him this.

 

Yuuri is twenty-five, not seventeen. He’s not making the decision impulsively nor alone. He isn’t doing it only to forget about it later. He’s doing it for pride, a reminder to _himself._

 

Victor takes a breath. _This_ he would tell him.

 

“Well, if you’re concerned about making sure you could cover it up if you wished, your shoulder blade would be a good place to start… but then I wouldn’t be able to touch it like this.” He stops his journey of fingertips across Yuuri’s bare chest to trace rings over his heart.

 

“Vityenka,” Yuuri says again. He’s still smiling, even through all his blushes.

 

“I think maybe here, where you could see it, too—“ Victor resumes his trail down Yuuri’s side, lightly scratching a thumb just below the broad lat muscle of his back before following it across his ribcage. “Or here—“

 

He circles across Yuuri’s hipbones, watching Yuuri’s abdominal muscles flex and shiver beneath the light touch of his fingers. Victor runs his thumb over the band of Yuuri’s sweatpants before hooking it beneath the elastic and beginning to pull down, down below his hips—

 

_“Vityenka,”_ Yuuri says for a third time, and his admonishment is only a whisper.

 

“Isn’t it amazing?” Victor asks him, his own quiet voice dreamy as he raises his eyes to meet Yuuri’s across the distance between them that is too far, always too far. “My husband is an Olympian. He’s even going to win gold. Wow, Yuuri!”

 

It’s Yuuri’s turn to reach out to Victor, and Victor leans into his touch. Yuuri touches Victor’s lips, and Victor keeps them parted, breathing warmth onto his fingertips.

 

“He sounds quite a lot like _my_ husband,” Yuuri says softly. “Except mine already _has_ won gold. Many times.”

 

“I think we both have good taste in husbands,” breathes Victor.

 

“Mine is better. He’s always been—”

 

_“No,”_ Victor says, suddenly vehement, and his eyes snap wide open. “You’re insulting my husband. My Yuuri, that’s untrue. Mine broke _your_ husband’s world records. I think I’m lucky to have him, really. And best of all, I’ll get to be there to kiss mine when he wins.”

 

“You can kiss him _now,”_ Yuuri whispers. He lowers his head, weight rested nearly entirely on top of Victor as he presses nose to nose, forehead to forehead, and closes his eyes.

 

“Wow,” Victor says again, equally breathy. “I really am the luckiest husband, after all.”

 

And he obliges.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a joke and then it became serious. I don’t know what happened. The competitive swimmer in me apologizes for the Ryan Lochte mention here, especially in the context it’s used, when I really should have used Nathan Adrian or Cullen Jones instead. Sadly Adrian doesn't have the tattoo on his bicep and Jones just isn't as much of a household name as Lochte, but they're both much cuter.
> 
> OH and I guess because I wasn't explicit, yeah, Yuuri takes the short program world record from Yurio either at Worlds or sometime between the Grand Prix Final and Worlds because... well, I want him to have both records, and because he absolutely can. Yurio's fifteen, the kid will be fine, he's got time 
> 
> You can also find this posted on my [tumblr](http://jinlian.tumblr.com/post/155701987617/like-a-design).


End file.
